Virtue's Last Reward Playstation Vita (PlayStation Vita)

Este es un juego que combina el genero de "visual novel" y puzzles de una forma magistral. Te lleva por varias lineas o acontecimientos los cuales te muestran diferentes finales.Llegar al final "verdadero" es lo mejor ya que te deja con ganas de más y sobre todo te conecta con el siguiente juego "Zero Time Dilemma".Pronto saldrá una compilación que traerá este juego y el anterior "999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" así que tu decides si esperar por ella o coger este juego.Hace poco leí el libro de "Hiperespacio" de Michio Kaku, que sorpresa que me lleve al ver que este libro complemento ampliamente mi experiencia con este juego, ya que el trae muchos conceptos compartidos.Casi 40 horas de juego, historia increíble y personajes de los cuales no te olvidaras en un tiempo.

True sequel to great visual novel.

Das Spiel ist ein Nachfolger zum DS-Titel "999 - 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors".Die Charaktere sind Interessant, genau wie das allgemeine Setting.Man hat die Wahl die Audioausgabe entweder auf Englisch oder Japanisch zu stellen, was mir sehr gefällt.Gutes Spiel, 5 Sterne von mir

Zero Escape takes place after the events of its prequel, Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Hours. Much like before, the player takes control of a protagonist whose primary goal is to win the Nonary game, hosted by a masked man named Zero. The gameplay has improved. The addition of a flowchart to jump between events you've already seen and the ability to take notes are welcome changes. What makes this game nice is that you don't have to have played the first one to enjoy it. It does a nice job of recapping the events when appropriate and you never feel a dependence on the last game. You play as a new character who doesn't know what happened in the last game and by playing from his point of view, you learn whatever you need to as you go on.One major change is the fact that your interaction with characters is lost. You have mostly lost out on the ability to respond to a character. Instead, you simply watch the main character's conversation unfold. This makes the game feel more guided and predetermined.PROS:Great storyAbility to replay events and jump around the different branches in the storyAbility to take notes"Multiple endings"No knowledge of the last game requiredCONS:"Multiple endings"Repetitive decisionsLimited choices in dialogue

A few years ago, a little known game from Japan called 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors made its way to the United States. The game was a visual novel interspersed with escape room puzzles. If you're unfamiliar with the visual novel genre, it is a reasonably popular type of game in Japan which typically contains a branching story, lots of text (occasionally with voice acting), static visuals, and music. Visual novels are not popular in the United States, which explained why 999 came in under the radar. Nevertheless, it quickly received strong praise from Western reviewers. What distinguished 999 from its other visual novel brethren? Besides the fact that it got translated to English, 999 had fantastic writing, an incredible story, and interesting characters. At the time of its release, the creators of 999 were unsure whether they would make a sequel, and the main writer (Kotaro Uchikoshi) publicly made it known that whether a sequel would be made would depend in large part on the reception 999 received both in Japan and in the US.Well, 999 did sell well enough to justify making a sequel, and this game is it. Like its predecessor, it is still a visual novel interspersed with escape room puzzles, so if you've played 999 you have a good idea what to expect here. If you haven't played 999, I *very strongly* recommend playing 999 before playing this game. While the story of Virtue's Last Reward stands by itself reasonably well, you will gain a better appreciation of the themes and characters in VLR if you have first played 999. (There's also the fact that this game spoils a large part of 999.)What's different between VLR and 999? The major changes include a shift from 2d to 3d models, voice acting for everyone except the main character, and an explicit flowchart which keeps track of your progression in the story. Initially, I was skeptical of some of the changes, especially the addition of voice acting, but after playing the game I think all of these changes are for the better. The visuals look sharp, the voice acting is really good, and the flowchart makes it so that you never have to solve the same puzzles twice even if you want to explore all the branches of the story. (In other words, the flowchart not only provides a visual representation of the branching nature of the story, it also allows you to jump to any part of the story you have seen and change your decisions or replay the puzzle or novel sections of the game.)If you've played 999, you know that it has one of the most mind-bending, insane stories in all of games (or for that matter, all of popular media). I don't want to give anything away about the story in VLR, but I think it's safe to say that the story does a good job of keeping you hooked and provides its fair share of "omgwtf" moments. Like its predecessor, the story could only be told in an interactive medium like video games (in other words, you couldn't make a book or TV adaptation without heavily distorting the structure of the plot). The characters are probably even better developed in VLR than 999, which partially is a function of the fact that VLR is substantially longer than 999. Zero III is one of my favorite game characters of all time (up there with GLaDOS from Portal), and his/her voice actor is simply brilliant in this game.The puzzles are more or less of the same flavor as in 999. You find yourself stuck in a room (or complex of rooms) with a few other characters, and need to figure out a way to open a safe which contains the key to exit the room. This typically involves exploring the environment - unlike many escape room puzzles, all objects you need to obtain are in plain view and easy to interact with - and then solving some sort of logic puzzle. These puzzles range from easy to fairly hard, but if you're not an expert at puzzles, don't worry: the game provides an easy mode where the other characters will give you hints on how to proceed. In contrast, on "hard mode" (which is the default mode), they will give you very few hints, and the ones they give you are often either cryptic or obvious.I only have a few negative comments about the game. I purchased the Vita version, and I found the touchscreen controls to be slightly less accurate than the stylus controls for 999 on the Nintendo DS. This is especially noticeable when you try to write (you can keep notes in the game) using your finger, but you can probably get around this by using a capacitive stylus. Also, the heavily branching nature of the game lends itself to a fair amount of repetition, since at any given branch point there's still a considerable amount of overlap in the events that follow regardless of the choice you make. Fortunately, you can fast-forward through text you've already seen. The branching can also make it hard to remember the preceding events in whatever path you are currently on, because of the extensive amount of jumping between paths necessary to complete the game. (On the other hand, this feeling of disorientation was probably intentional...) Still, these are minor quibbles, and others might not find these issues to be a problem.In summary, VLR is a great sequel to 999. It's one of the best games available for the current generation of handhelds. If you're a fan of 999, get this game. If you haven't played 999 before, but enjoy great stories and puzzles, get 999 first, finish it (make sure to get all the endings), and then get this game. It's a shame that games like this aren't more common in the United States, because 999 and VLR are some of the best games made in the past few years.